Shell, DOE Collaborate on Carbon Capture Project

The US Department of Energy and Shell Canada will collaborate in field tests to validate advanced monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) technologies for underground storage of carbon dioxide.

The tests will take place at Shell’s Quest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Alberta, Canada.

The project will reduce CO2 emissions from Shell’s Scotford Upgrader by more than 1 million metric tons per year by capturing the CO2 and injecting it more than one mile underground.

The Shell Quest team and technology developers funded by the DOE and managed by DOE’s National Technology Laboratory, have been discussing opportunities to field test and validate advanced MVA technologies at the Quest CO2 underground storage site.

The Canadian government and province of Alberta are funding the Quest project; the DOE is leveraging a federal investment of about $3 million in existing and ongoing projects in their research and development program by proposing roughly $500,000 for this collaborative effort to field-test advanced MVA technologies.

Details of the collaboration are expected to be finalized in early 2015.

The Shell Quest project and the Archer Daniels Midland CCS demonstration project in Decatur, Illinois, managed by NETL, are expected to begin injecting CO2 in 2015. Each project will capture and store about 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year in saline formations.